“It tears my heart to see you all so cruelly treated,” said Jarl Leifr, his voice rich with sorrow. He stood before the prisoners, resplendent in a black, fox fur coat, his broad belt gleaming with jewels, a mantle of black wolf fur about his rounded shoulders. “I remember all too well the generosity with which Jarl Styrbjörn received my son and I last year, how he took us into his home and thought of nothing else but helping me recapture Lexa from the cruel invaders.”

Skadi glared. Her father had received Leifr and Naddr with alarm and genuine hospitality, but both had turned to scorn when he’d discovered that they’d both fled Lexa at the first sign of trouble, abandoning their people to row forth with a complement of huscarls and several chests filled with treasure.

“But the twists and turnings of fate are cruel, and only the norns can say what tomorrow shall bring. This, however, I know: you are all bound for the Archean Empire, a week’s journey if the weather holds to the great northern port of Mávri Aktí. There you shall be sold as slaves. Some of you will be taken to the mines and quarries of Vathý Kenó, others to the village of Kakó Xýlo to cut down those ancient trees from which the Archeans build their ships. Some -” And here he stared at Skadi’s mother, his pleasure obvious “- will be held as possible pawns to be played in the game of empire. For all of you, however, your old lives are over.”

Skadi couldn’t restrain herself. “Where is your son, Leifr?”

The exiled jarl frowned. “He’ll appear soon.”

Honor compelled her to speak on. Honor and hatred. “Are you so sure? He left at dawn. It’s now almost midday. Where could he be?”

Leifr’s frown deepened, and Skadi realized: he didn’t know. He didn’t know where his son had gone, or why.

“What are you getting at, Styrbjörnsdóttir?”

Skadi struggled to her feet. Several soldiers raised the butts of their spears to beat her back down, but then paused as Leifr stepped closer. She smiled at him. “I know where your son is.” Her smile grew predatory. “At least, I know where he fell.”

Emotions flickered across Leifr’s swollen, turgid features. Shock, fear, disbelief, horror, then nothing as he mastered himself. “You lie. An easy vengeance for one who just watched her home burn.”

“He asked to meet me at Widow’s Rock. Asked me to be his woman.” Skadi made no attempt to hide her scorn. “Thought that the sight of a few Archean ships would break my will.”

Everybody was listening. Even the Archean soldiers who didn’t understand her words were rapt, attuned to her tone, the exiled jarl’s growing horror.

“My response was to bury my axe in his face. He fell from the rock like a doll and burst apart on the rocks below. And you know what came out of him?”

“Shut her up,” hissed the jarl. “Shut her up!”

“Dung!” shouted Skadi as the first spear butts slammed into her. “He was filled to the throat with stinking shit, just like you!”

A blow to her stomach bent her over, another to her shoulder knocked her down. But nothing in all of the middle realm could stop her from crying out, “My axe, Leifr! My -”

A blow cracked across her temple, and she toppled over onto her side. Aurnir bellowed in outrage, and the blows ceased. Face pressed to the slick planks, Skadi chuckled, the pain goading her on. Aurnir helped her sit back up, and she stared at Leifr’s crimson face, her lips twisted into a sneer.

“Enjoy your betrayal, oathbreaker.” Her words carried loud and clear, and a deep, resonant sense of power settled upon her. “You will lose everything that you love, but death will not come for you till you beg for it on bended knees.”

And a writhing brown and green chord emerged from Leifr’s chest, sickly and without runes of power about it, to extend away into the distance, affixing him to the skein of the norns.

At the same time, a golden filament, the first to return, emerged from her own breast, gleaming true and pure to extend into the distance, fading from view a score of yards away.

Leifr’s gaze tracked neither of these changes but his eyes bulged as he stared at Skadi in revulsion and hate. His hand flew to the jeweled hilt of his blade, and he drew it with a clumsy jerk.

“Your last words, seiðkonur. I’ll have your head!”

And he strode toward her, sword raised high, only to stop as a Archean soldier stepped before him, calm and confident, and shook his head.

Leifr roared and said something in crude Archean, a handful of broken words, then pointed at Skadi.

The soldier, gold at his shoulder, replied quietly but with great force.

Leifr glanced around the docks. Over twenty soldiers were watching intently, some with their hands on the hilts of their blades.

Furious, the exiled jarl slid his blade back into its sheath and stepped away. “See how boldly you speak when you’re branded and bedded by your new master,” he hissed. “I declare you a liar. Naddr will appear before we cast off. Pah!”

And he turned and stalked away.

The tension left Skadi, and she slumped, the pain in her ribs and temple acute. Still, she took comfort from the single golden thread that spun forth from her heart. She’d begun to fear that her wyrd had been permanently expended, but it seemed daring deeds fit for a drengr would bring some back.

“Impressive,” whispered Glámr, shifting closer. “You’ve a wicked tongue about you, Styrbjörnsdóttir. I’d never have guessed.”

“You’re one to speak.” She smiled to assure Aurnir, who huffed and loomed over her protectively. “Until today I thought you incapable of talking.”

Glámr’s eyes narrowed, but then he shrugged with a liquid grace. His physique was subtly inhuman as well; broad, massive shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist, arms roped with muscle and overly long. His legs were banded and he’d always walked hunched over, as if expecting a blow; for the first time she wandered how tall he’d be if he were to stand completely straight.

“Only a fool talks for the pleasure of hearing their own voice.”

“Then does being a mute make you the wisest of men?”

“Not a man,” he said softly, but with subtle venom. “It’s been made well clear to me that I’ll never be that.”

Shouts indicated that the last of the looting was over. Archeans emerged from the village carrying Njall’s chest of precious ingots; the burst bands of iron showed where they’d torn it free of the stone smithy floor by force.

Damian had been edging closer, and with a wary glance up at Aurnir, he leaned in as well. “A few of the villagers made it out of the great hall, Skadi.”

She’d not dared hope. “You’re sure?”

“The captain sent a score of men after them, but they’ve not returned.” His smile revealed even white teeth. “I’d say they’re well on their way to alerting Búðir.”

It was a twenty-mile hike across the mountains and through the High Pass to the village of Búðir on the other side of the island.

“Jarl Onarr will come to our aid,” she said decisively. “And he’ll help her get word to Father, wherever he may be.”

Glámr’s voice was soft. “If Jarl Onarr has no troubles of his own.”

Skadi’s breath caught. Búðir was half the size of Kalbaek, but Onarr had announced no intentions of raiding early. He’d be home, surely, with his three ships and sixty huscarls. Her gaze drifted over the five Archean triremes, and her hope sank.

Who was to say the Archeans would only send five ships against him?

A deep and bitter hatred blossomed in her heart. She heard again Naddr’s boastful words: “This is a new world. Archea’s world.”

Three Skrímslaeyjan longships had arrived after the fight was finished to ferry the treasure and captives across the Shattered Sea. The loot was being carried onto one, and the first group of prisoners onto the second.

Skadi watched with helpless horror. Friends and people she’d known all her life were shoved and knocked into the center of the great, sleek ship. Orri the old hunter who’d lost his hand to a bear six years back. Randr stumbling from the wine he’d already consumed that morning. Alfdis who baked the sweetened mead, old Brigida who’d been a shieldmaiden half a century ago in the War of Broken Shields and whose bloodied face showed that even at seventy summers she had plenty of fight left in her. Gyrdr who’d taught Skadi how to stitch beautiful cross patterns for hems and collars, little Hallotta and her nine-year-old brother Goll, whose face was battered and bruising quickly.

Skadi’s world was falling apart before her eyes, and it was then that a black snow began to fall, cindered flakes spiraling down from the skies. She blinked as one caught in her lashes and looked up, wondering, and realized it was ashes falling upon them all.

Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to cry. Her father was still at sea with her older brother, Svinnr, and his five ships. And she? Why, she had a filament of gold emerging from her chest, bright and pure as Freyja’s own blessing.

Patroclus strode down the gangplank onto the dock, his expression business-like. He cast about, saw Skadi’s mother and younger brother, and walked over to them.

“Nothing personal, Lady Sigurd,” he said in the northern tongue. “But we Archeans are grown wise to the ways of your Northmen and their sons everywhere. Standing orders.”

It happened so quickly that Skadi was just starting to scream when the kentarch drew a knife from his hip, yanked Riki’s head back, and slit his throat.

The dock convulsed. Prisoners tried to rise up, their outrage feral, and Skadi’s mother screamed in a manner so hideous that the sound etched Skadi’s soul like acid. Riki, unable to clasp his hands to his throat, shook and fell over to bleed out on the dock.

“Put a weapon in his hand!” screamed Skadi, over and over again. “Please! Put a weapon in his hand!”

But Patroclus merely stared, grim-faced, then bent down to wipe his dagger clean on Riki’s leg and sheath it.

“No vendettas, no blood-feuds, none of that nonsense. What’s done is done.” He looked to the guards. “Carry them onto the next ship. Throw this body into the water.”

Their mother was wailing, having fallen over Riki’s still form, but the guards pulled her up roughly and dragged her onto the second ship.

Everywhere Archeans were knocking people back down, hitting them with the butts of their spears, shouting terse commands.

Skadi could only stare as two guards seized Riki by the hands and feet, dragged him down the closest pier, then simply hurled him into the water.

And like that he was gone.

Skadi sank back, aghast, her thoughts frozen.

Her mother was shoved down to sit in the belly of the ship. Others followed after.

Skadi could only stare at the streak of blood. She couldn’t breathe. A thousand memories flashed before her eyes, moments of foolishness and fun, how gravely Riki had accepted his first wooden blade from their father when he’d turned six, how he’d carried it everywhere thereafter. The interminable games of pretend war he’d made her play, and how eventually they had quickened her own love for blades and arrows.

Gone.

The norns had reached out with their scissors and snipped his thread.

Fifteen years he’d been granted, and no more.

And somehow the world continued. Guards laughed, sacks and chests were carried onto the ships, and the only thought, the only notion that made sense was perfectly encapsulated in one burning word: revenge.

Patroclus had thought he’d end any hopes of a blood-feud by killing Riki?

She’d show him how wrong he was.

Feeling bleak resolve steal into her heart, she turned to Glámr, who shifted uneasily beneath the weight of her stare.

“Do you see it?”

He frowned, lips curdling around his tusks. “See what, pray tell?”

“The golden thread that emerges from your heart. From mine?”

Genuine confusion flickered across his face, but only briefly. He was a past master at schooling his features. “Is this a game? One in which I am to play the fool once more? I’ll tell you now, I’ve played this game my whole life and am grown tired of it.”

He didn’t see it. She glanced up at Aurnir. “What of you? Do you see the gold string?”

The half-giant blinked down at her. His lashes were so pale they appeared white when they appeared at all, and his ravaged visage, creased deep with lines and canyons like the face of a cliff, crumpled further in confusion. His voice was slow and puzzled. “Gold?”

Iron and stone, mountain and jewels, gold and silver, these things Aurnir readily understood. But it was clear he didn’t know what she was talking about, either.

Neither of them saw it.

Damian was watching her curiously, his golden irises unnatural and reflective in the spring sunshine. “You see golden threads?”

He was a priest from Nearós Ílios, so she answered him with a question. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Our ágios are always depicted with the sun blazing behind them. Though the old religion from Palió Oneiro claims that those were threads of gold, bright as the sun itself.”

“Ágios. What are those?”

“A holy person recognized by the church for their heroic sanctity.” His voice grew warmer, more assured. “They are known by their peerless goodness and ability to work miracles.”

Skadi thought of her fight against the Archean soldiers. How their blades had missed her, time and again.

Glámr was listening intently.

“Miracles,” she whispered.

“Yes.” Damian’s golden stare grew piercing. “Such as being able to fight six men and emerge without a scratch.”

“I’m no ágios.”

Damian made no reply.

For a moment she could only stare back, and then she relaxed. No, the priest was wrong. After all, Patroclus the kentarch was wreathed in golden lines, fifteen or twenty of them bursting from his heart, and he was clearly as far from “peerless goodness” as one could get. That, and she knew it was Freyja that had blessed her, not the Sun God.

“All right, on feet,” barked one of the Archeans in rough Nord. The other soldiers tensed as the prisoners slowly struggled upright, hands on pommels or gripping spear shafts in readiness, but nobody made a move to resist.

The second ship was pushing away from the docks, loaded with prisoners. Skadi watched as the traitorous Skrímslaeyjan sailors dipped their oars into the fjord’s placid waters and began to row.

“You, woman,” barked the same guard, pointing his sword at Skadi. “Tell giant sit middle boat. Trouble? Throat cut.”

Skadi glared at the Archean. Something in her stare caused him to blanche and lower his sword, and only then did she look up at Aurnir, who was eyeing the ship with deep misgivings.

“Come on,” she said, bumping his waist with her shoulder. “No sense in dying on these docks. Are you coming?”

The wind gusted, tossing Aurnir’s flaxen hair about, and he reached up delicately with his bound hands to pull wisps from his eyes. He rumbled his assent, and carefully, dainty as an old woman picking her way through an herb garden, began to make his way down to the pier.

Glámr gave her a grudging nod and, hunched as if skulking through shadows instead of walking in broad daylight, he set off after the half-giant.

Skadi inhaled deeply, resolve firming in her heart.

She’d never step out onto a slave block.

Her wyrd was not to be a slave.

And a second golden chord emerged from her heart to fly forth into the brilliant blue sky.

Her heart lifted at the sight, and then, resolve affirmed, she followed the others down to the third ship.